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Summer Session Kansan Friday, July 13, 1962
Benefits of Space Exploration Expected To More Than Repay Billions Spent on It
WASHINGTON—(UPI)—There's gold in space.
Space agency officials say direct dividends such as those from weather and communication satellites, and incidental harvests from improved electronic gadgetry and materials, will repay the billions being invested in the exploration and exploitation of space.
Take the incidental payoffs first. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says they will be tremendous. For example:
Miniature sensors used to monitor astronauts' reactions are being converted into "electronic nurses" which keep watch at a distance on hospital patients.
Space-proof materials are being made into nearly indestructible toasters, refrigerators, pots and pans.
These, however, may turn out to be petty pickings compared to the dividends already being realized from weather satellites and anticipated from communication stations in space.
THE UNITED STATES launched the first of seven planned TIROS weather satellites on April 1, 1960. Already TIROS weather eyes are credited with saving many lives and preventing a billion dollars in property loss by providing advance warning of hurricanes and other severe storms.
The big benefit from meteorological stations in space is that they keep a global watch on the weather. Only one-fifth of the earth is covered by conventional weather observation methods.
The thousands of cloud cover pictures taken by TIROS satellites have been fed into the world's forecasting networks. The latest TIROS weather stations are so designed as to cover 22 million square miles more of the earth's surface than was photographed by the earlier ones.
Although the weather bureau has been using TIROS data in its regular forecasts for some time, it does not expect to have a weather satellite system operating routinely on a world-wide basis until NIMBUS comes along.
NIMBUS, considerably more advanced than TIROS, will be launched into north-south polar orbits, which means it will observe practically every spot on earth once every 12 hours. The performance of TIROS is limited by the fact that it is launched into east-west orbits.
Unlike TIROS, NIMBUS will be oriented so that its cameras are aimed constantly at the earth. The television eyes aboard TIROS are pointed at empty space much of the time.
In addition to these research and development satellites paid for by NASA, there will be four NIMBUS satellites—two each in 1964 and 1965—bought by the Weather Bureau for use in a full-fledged, completely operational space weather system.
BUT NOT EVEN NIMBUS will satisfy the weather man. He wants more than one view of the local weather every 12 hours. He wants something that can keep a steady eye on a storm, of whatever nature, from beginning to end.
To accomplish this, NASA is planning AEROS, tentatively scheduled for launching in 1966. AEROS satellites will be fired into equatorial orbits 22,300 miles high where they will seem to hold a fixed position in respect to a point on earth under them. They will be able to scan the earth constantly over both hemispheres.
Even if weather satellites merely brought about a 10 per cent improvement in forecasting accuracy, the House Space Committee says, it would result in savings to farmers and others "totaling hundreds of millions of dollars annually."
IT IS IN ESTIMATING the returns from communication satellites that the space optimists have gone farthest out. One authority said space communication systems would be netting $100 billion a year by the turn of the century.
The more conservative members of the industry have been more inclined of late to emphasize the costs and uncertainties than the problematical profits.
The technical problems are far from being solved. Moreover, for every technical problem a dozen problems of ownership (public versus private) and regulation (national and international) and use remain to be resolved.
Communication satellites fall into two general groups -passive and active. Echo I, launched Aug. 12, 1960, is a 100-foot aluminized sphere, tall as a 10-story building, which reflects radio signals.
Messages and crude television
programs have been bounced off Echo I from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Bigger and more rugged Echo satellites will be launched.
But this kind of long-distance communication requires extremely sensitive and powerful and costly ground facilities.
The so-called active repeater—which receives, amplifies and retransmits—appears to be the more promising. Experimental trans-oceanic, and trans-hemispheric television broadcasts will be undertaken this summer with active satellites.
Britain, France, Italy and Brazil are setting up the ground stations needed for such experiments. Other countries are expected to join.
It is estimated that overseas calls will jump from four million today to about 100 million by 1980. Space experts say satellites will be able to meet the expanding need far more cheaply than additional submarine cables.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY has ordered NASA to develop as rapidly as possible a satellite system capable of bringing communications to the most remote corners of the globe.
NASA is moving ahead in this field on its own and in cooperation with private industry. This year it will launch two to four Telstar communication satellites designed and paid for by the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and another built by Radio Corp. of America.
Scientist Says 105 Cancer Types Exist
By Delos Smith UPI Science Editor
NEW YORK — After much scientific fretting and thinking, Dr. George E. Moore, the famous cancer scientist and surgeon, has come to the conclusion that 105 varieties of cancer afflict the human race.
Rarely do you find an acknowledged cancer expert, willing to name an exact number although they all know there are many. Previous expert numberings of varieties have ranged from 70 to 500.
"It should be emphasized repeatedly that no single cause, and hence no single, magic, curative drug, is likely to be found," he said. On the other hand, classifying cancers by variety is scientifically useful.
It is an approach which centers on "the possibility of curing many individual cancers in various individual ways rather than on the general incurability of cancer in general."
Moore is director of the Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, N. Y., editorializing in the technical organ of the American College of Surgeons, he said the figure of 105 "is not a magic one, since the exact value depends upon your own personal philosophy.
You can be scientifically emphatic in stating that cancer is not a single disease, he said. Some kinds of tumors are entirely benign and some of those which are malignant "are rarely fatal." But opposed to the latter are the few kinds which are just about never cured.
"since most of the causative agents are unknown. Besides, some agents apparently can cause several sorts of cancers," just as the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis can cause a number of different diseases.
Obviously, he continued. you can't classify cancers by their causes.
NOR CAN you classify cancers by the body sites where they rise. That would involve much duplication, and he cited one type of cancer which "arises from dozens of different organ sites."
"The unpleasant fact," he said, is that no one really knows how many kinds of cancers there are. "Indeed, it is not even possible to find good information as to how many kinds of cells there are in the human body."
Cancers are presumed to be derived from single cells. Embryologists can argue each single cell is unique in itself. If that were altogether true, you'd have to consider every cancer different from all other cancers.
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NASA has a 55-pound high orbit voice communication satellite named SYNCOM, in the works.
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Off hand, it strikes many engineers that the best global system would be based on satellites launched into so-called stationary orbits at 22,300 miles' altitude.
Transatlantic television and telephone via satellite was demonstrated this year. But this does not mean that economical satellite systems are imminent.
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Three such satellites appropriately separated in equatorial orbit could effectively cover the earth. But the problem of maintaining them in position against all the space forces tending to make them drift, and the problem of powering and maintaining their electronic components for
It will take a lot of time to develop complicated radio stations in space which can operate unattended for years in a wickedly hostile environment.
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